I read a comprehensive article about contrasting portals to content management systems. Primarily my gripe today are portals, there are some serious issues with providing this service for members. One large issues is cost. Very costly budgets are required to develop and implement these services that don’t necessarily payoff for users. Additionally, most small/medium associations could never rationalize the 100k-250k that would be required for the technology, let alone the maintenance costs.
Providing staff/users/stakeholders/members with a single point of access to the web and related applications and databases
Members don’t need another Yahoo or Google. They need services that they can not get elsewhere. These services should be very specific applications for your organization and thus directly benefit your members.
Can your committees and boards vote and exchange resources digitally ? Can discussions be facilitated effectively that don’t push data disruptively like traditional services, such as e-mail /list serves? What about an organization that does publishing for journals, perhaps a community based peer review system that weighs and ranks users input before publishing the article?
Do you have any applications that are currently only in your dreams?
